Barry Cohen didn’t start out his journey looking to build some of the toughest watches in the world, but that’s exactly what happened.
In the mid-1980s, he discovered Swiss company mb-Microtech AG, makers of tritium gas tubes used in safety equipment, signage, and more. What this tech was not yet used in was watches, and Cohen saw an opportunity. After obtaining a loan, he launched Luminox — from “light” and “night” in Latin — with a partner, and began manufacturing carbon-reinforced, quartz-powered watches illuminated with miniature tritium tubes. After a meeting with a Navy SEAL Chief in the early ’90s, Luminox obtained a contract to make specialized watches for the elite American special operations community, and the brand’s military association catapulted them into fame through retail partners such as The Sharper Image and Cabela’s. The rest, as they say, is history.
Barry CohenCohen has since left Luminox, though he hasn’t left the watch world behind: He’s done OEM manufacturing for over 25 companies that didn’t have watchmaking arms, including firms in the clothing, motoring, and manufacturing spaces. Most recently, he launched Time Concepts, an umbrella company that houses several brands specializing in different types of tough-as-nails, quartz-powered watches.
Quality, needless to say, is important to Cohen — all the more so when he was making watches for Navy SEALs. When he moved into private label manufacturing, Cohen began searching for a factory in Asia that would produce to his standards. It would be over 35 factories before he found what he was looking for: a quality Asian manufacturer that operated to Swiss standards, and whose facilities are for all intents and purposes “clean” rooms.
Henry PhillipsThe defect rate amongst Cohen’s products is now an incredibly low 0.5%, and each watch is individually tested. He’s had only 15-18 watches fail due to water incursion during a five-year period, and this, admittedly, is often due to user error, such as someone forgetting to screw down a crown. (A master watchmaker in the U.S. couldn’t find a single spec of dust in one of his watches.)
